CHINESE JOURNAL OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

Vol. 24,aNo. 4,a2011 ·553·

DOI: 10.3901/CJME.2011.04.553, available online at www.cjmenet.com; www.cjmenet.com.cn

New Method to Measure the Fill Level of the Ball Mill II—
Analysis of the Vibration Signals

HUANG Peng*, JIA Minping, and ZHONG Binglin

School of Mechanical Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing 211189, China

Received March 3, 2010; revised May 9, 2011; accepted May 13, 2011; published electronically May 18, 2011

Abstract: The exact measurement of the fill level is the key and basic problem for automatic control and optimized operation of the coal
pulverizing system. Because the ball mill pulverizing system is non-linearity, long time delay and time-varying, the reliable and
effective method for measuring the fill level was lacked at present. In order to reduce the influence by various factors on measuring the
fill level and improve the measuring accuracy of the fill level, a novel characteristic variable is proposed. A set of wireless transmission
device was designed to record vibration signals, and an accelerometer with high accuracy and large measuring range was mounted
directly on the mill shell to pick up the vibration signals from the mill shell. A series of data acquisition experiments under various ball
load and water content of coal conditions were conducted in an industrial mill to investigate the relationship between the fill level and
the angular position of the maximum vibration point of the mill shell through the analysis of the vibration signals. The analytical result
of test data clearly show that the angular position of the maximum vibration point on the mill shell decreases as the fill level increases.
At the same time, comparing with the traditional characteristic variable, the feature variable of the fill level proposed in this paper is not
subject to the effect of the ball load and water content of coal, which provides a new solution and reliable basis for the accurate
measurement of the fill level..

Key words: ball mill, fill level, vibration signal, signal processing

vibration methods can be used to measure the fill level

∗ based on the vibration signals of the bearing housings. At
1 Introduction
As the rotating of the mill, the steel balls and coal
particles in the ball mill are brought to a certain height by
the centrifugal force of the mill and the friction, and then
fall along a parabolic trajectory under the effect of gravity.
In the course of falling, the part of impact energy of the
steel balls is absorbed by the coal particles to realize the
grinding and comminuting of the coal. Another part of
impact energy is delivered to the mill shell and causes the
vibration of the shell, this part of the impact energy is
further transmitted to the front and rear bearing housings.
The higher the coal load in the mill, the more impact
energy of steel balls is absorbed by the coal powder, and
the lower impact energy reaches the mill shell and bearing
housings to cause relatively small vibration, and vice-versa.
So the vibration strength of the mill shell and the bearing
housings to some extent can reflect the fill level
information. Because the accelerometer can be mounted
easily on the front and rear bearing housing, the traditional
* Corresponding author. E-mail: feihonghp@163.com
This project is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of
China (Grant No. 51005047, 51075070), Production and Research Joint
Innovation Fund of Jiangsu Province (Grant No. BY2009152), and New
Doctor Teacher Foundation of Southeast University of China (Grant No.
9202000024)
present among these methods, some characteristic values of
the fill level, such as amplitude[1, 2], energy[3–6], power[7,8]
and root mean square (RMS) of vibration signals[9, 10], were
extracted from the vibration signal of the bearing housings
to monitor the fill level.
However, besides the impact of steel balls, there are
many reasons and vibration sources, such as transmission
system vibration, foundation vibration, vibration caused by
the moment of asymmetry and installation error, which can
also cause the vibration of bearing housings. These
vibration sources will affect the characteristics of the time
and frequency domain of the vibration signals of the
bearing housings. Furthermore, vibration transmission path
has also influence on the vibration signals of bearing
housings. So the vibration signals of the bearing housings
cannot accurately reflect the collision condition of the steel
balls and the fill level information in the mill. Due to the
difficulties in accelerometer installation and vibration data
transmission, in addition to the high cost of the vibration
data acquisition system, to date there has been little work
on measuring the fill level by processing the vibration
signals of the mill shell but the work of GUGEL, et al[11, 12],
is noteworthy. In their work, two vibration sensors, 180
degrees apart, were used to collect signal information from
 HUANG Peng, et al: New Method to Measure the Fill Level of the Ball Mill II—
·554· YXIANG Zhongxia, et al: OptimalAnalysis
Design ofofBicycle Pgarameters Considering BiomechanicsY
FrameSignals
the Vibration

the mill shell, so that the instantaneous readings can be

averaged. The averaged data were then fed into a dynamic
neural network and a fill level measurement from 0% to
100% percent was output.
In this research, a series of experiments were carried out
at an industrial ball mill in coal-fired power plant, and the
vibration signals were collected directly from the mill shell. Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of the fixed position of the sensor
The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the and the wireless transmission device
correlation between the angular position of maximum
vibration point on the mill shell and the fill level by
analyzing and processing the vibration signals from the mill
shell.

2 Experiment

2.1 Experimental introduction

In the experiments, a 3.5 m-diameter by 6.0 m-long
industrial tubular ball mill driven by a three-phase motor
(YTM630-6,1000kW, 985r/min) was operated at 17.57
r/min (77% of critical speed). In the mill, the charge of the Fig. 2. Installation image of the wireless transmission
steel balls was made up of three different diameter balls: 40, device mounted on the mill shell
50 and 60 mm corresponding to 40%, 40%, 20% mass ratio,
respectively. As the sensor rotates with the rotation of the mill, the
Compared with the bearing housings, the installation of collecting region of the sensor on the mill shell needed to
sensor, acquisition and transmission of vibration signals be determined. Due to a close relationship existing in the
from the mill shell are more difficult. The vibration data vibration of the mill shell and the fill level, in this research
acquisition system comprises two major components: a the impact region of the outmost layer steel balls on the
high resolution accelerometers and a wireless transmission mill shell was chosen as the region of data acquisition. In
device mounted directly to the mill shell. Fig. 1 shows the Ref. [13], the charge motion of the mill has been simulated
layout of the senor and the wireless transmission device on by the DEM, and the impact region of the outmost layer
the mill shell. Since the vibration amplitude of the mill steel balls can be shown in Fig. 3. In order to reduce the
shell is far greater than that of bearing housings of the mill, acquisition group and acquisition time of the vibration
an accelerometer (PCB Piezotronics Inc., USA) with a signals, the region of data acquisition was in range of
large measurement range was chosen. The amplitude range 310°–340° on the mill shell, as shown in Fig. 3. In other
and the sensitivity of the accelerometer are in the range of words, only when the sensor rotates in this region, it keeps
±981 m/s2 and 5.10 mV/(m/s2), respectively. This sensor working condition.
was located in the middle of the mill shell, as shown in Fig.
1. A small metal plate was first welded on the mill shell.
Then the sensor was screwed on the metal plate. The sensor
installed on the mill shell rotates with the mill, which is not
the same as the traditional vibration method where the
sensor can be directly connected with the data acquisition
computer by the cable. In order to realize the wireless
transmission of the vibration data, a set of wireless
transmitter device was designed, and this device can
transmit the vibration signals of the mill shell to the data
acquisition computer wirelessly. Some sampling commands,
such as sampling frequency, sampling point and sampling
angular position, were sent to the wireless transmission Fig. 3. Region of the data acquisition on the mill shell
device by the data acquisition software, to collect the
vibration data. The method of fixing the wireless
transmitter was similarity with that of the sensor. Firstly, a 2.2 Experimental conditions
metal supporting plate was welded on the mill shell. Then In the power plant, three experiments were conducted,
the wireless transmission device was mounted on this with seven fill level conditions, i.e., 0%, 5%, 10%, …, 35%.
supporting plate by six screws, see Fig. 2. Although the fill level conditions were same in every
 CHINESE JOURNAL OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING ·555·

experiment, the steel ball load and the water content in the shell. The vibration signals at angular position 310° were
coal were different during these experiments, which can be then collected.
seen from Table 1. In the following, the 10% fill level (2) With the similar method, the sensor can collect
condition in the first experiment as an example was vibration data at angular position 310° and 320°,
illustrated to introduce the process of experimental respectively. At each angular position, thirty vibration data
operation. were collected.
Fig. 4(a) shows a typical time domain waveform of the
Table 1. Ball load and water content in the coal for three tests mill shell vibration, and the corresponding FFT spectrum is
Test conditions The 1st test The 2nd test The 3rd test presented in Fig. 4(b). From the amplitude of the vibration
Ball load M/t 32 38 44 signal shown in Fig. 4, it is obviously seen that the
Water content of coal w/% 6.30 8.64 7.71
vibration of the mill shell is very large. Moreover, the main
energy of the vibration signal focus on the frequency band
(1) Under the working condition of the mill, the coal in the range of 1kHz–10kHz, which is can be seen from the
feeder was closed, and during this operation only the coal FFT spectrum. This frequency band should be the main
powder was output from the outlet and no coal was input range of impact frequency response caused by the impact
from the inlet by the coal feeder. This process lasted 10 min, of steel balls, and can reflect the fill level information.
and then there was no coal load (0% fill level) in the mill.
(2) After the above step, the coal feeder was restarted
and the outlet of the mill was closed. During this operation,
the coal was input from the inlet by the coal feeder and no
coal powder was output from the outlet. The coal feeder
was not closed until the coal load of 10% fill level (about 4
tons) was input, and then the vibration signals of the mill
shell were collected. In step (2), the outlet of the mill was
always closed, and the mill was maintained its normal
rotation state.

2.3 Collection of the vibration signals

Because the impact response range caused by the impact
of steel balls is relatively large, the sampling frequency
needs to be an appropriate value to fully capture the
original vibration information. In this research the sampling
frequency was set at 40 kHz after conducting several
experiments at different sampling frequency, and the
sampling point was set at 4 096 points.
When a vibration data is collected, the sensor can pass an
arc length of 10° with the rotation of the mill, and
dependent on the speed of the mill, sampling frequency and
sampling point. In other words, this vibration signal
contains vibration information of 10° arc length of the mill
shell. In order to obtain the vibration information from the
Fig. 4. Typical time domain and FFT waveform
data acquisition region (between 310°and 340° on the mill
of the vibration signal of the mill shell
shell), the sensor needs to work at angular position of 310°,
320° and 330° on the mill shell, respectively. The data
acquisition was governed by the Visual C++ programming
environment. The process of collecting data for 10% fill 3 Digital Signal Processing Technique
level condition in the first experiment is illustrated to
introduce the process of experimental operation. 3.1 Design of digital band-pass filter
(1) The work of collecting vibration data started after the Since the range of the impact frequency response was
coal load of 10% level was input the mill by the coal feeder. obtained in the previous content, a band-pass filter is
In the data acquisition software, the sampling angular needed to extract the impact information of the vibration
position was set at 310°, and this command was sent to the signal and eliminate the effect of other factors on the
wireless transmission device. The sensor did not start to vibration signal. A type I Chebyshev digital filter that is
work until it moved at the angular position 310° on the mill equiripple in the passband and monotonic in the stopband
 HUANG Peng, et al: New Method to Measure the Fill Level of the Ball Mill II—
·556· YXIANG Zhongxia, et al: OptimalAnalysis
Design ofofBicycle Pgarameters Considering BiomechanicsY
FrameSignals
the Vibration

was designed in this research. The prototype of this filter is were collected at angular position 310° can be denoted as
type I Chebyshev analog prototype filter. Because the
theory of this type analog prototype filter has been
s = xni i=1, 2, …, 30； n=1, 2, …, 4 096, (1)
adequately discussed and given elsewhere[14, 15], the
principle of this type filter is not introduced here.
The type I Chebyshev digital band-pass filter can be
where 4 096 is the number of the sampling point.
obtained by applying the variable substitution method to
the type I Chebyshev digital low-pass filter[15, 16]. Based on
the characteristic of the vibration signal from the mill shell,
the magnitude and phrase responses of designed filter are
shown in Fig. 5.

Fig. 5. Magnitude and phrase responses of type I

Chebyshev digital band-pass filter

The filtered time domain waveform is presented in Fig.

6a, and the corresponding frequency domain waveform is
shown in Fig. 6b. It is clear that the vibration information
in the range of 1 kHz–10 kHz is retained and other
information is removed, as shown in Fig. 6b.
3.2 Calculation of the position of the maximum
vibration point on the mill shell
In this research, the maximum vibration point on the mill
shell is obtained by compared the RMS value of all angular
positions in the data acquisition region (between 310° and
340°). Three hundred angular positions, i.e., 310.0°, 310.1°,
310.2°, …, 339.9°, were acquired in the data acquisition
region. The RMS value of each angular position can be
calculated from the time series data. In the next content, the
vibration signals collected at the 10% level case in the first
experiment are analyzed to introduce the calculation
method of the RMS value of each angular position and the
maximum vibration point of the mill shell. From the
introduction of Section 2.3, it is known that thirty vibration
signals at the angular position 310°, 320° and 330° were
collected by the sensor, respectively. The discrete vibration
values of the i th vibration signal in the time domain that
Fig. 6. Time and frequency domain waveforms obtained
after filtering the original mill shell vibration signal
with type I Chebyshev digital band-pass filter
The discrete vibration values in the time domain after
filtering this vibration data by the type I Chebyshev digital
band-pass filter can be represented as
p = yni i=1, 2, …, 30； n=1, 2, …, 4 096, (2)
when the ith data was collected, suppose m is the number
collected by the sensor at the discrete vibration points from
the angular position 310.0° to 310.1°. And these discrete
vibration values in the time domain are represented as x1i ,
x2i , …, xmi , respectively. After filtering this vibration data,
the corresponding discrete vibration values are y1i , y2i , …,
ymi , respectively. The RMS value of angular position
310.0° for the i th vibration signal is then calculated from
 CHINESE JOURNAL OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING ·557·

i 1 m i 2
YRMS = å ( yn ) . (3)
m n= 1

Similarly, the RMS value of the angular positions 310.1°,

310.2°, 310.3°, … , 319.9° can be obtained, and the
vibration signals obtained at the angular position 320° and
330° can be analyzed by the same principle. The RMS
values of the angular positions 320.0°, 320.1°, 320.2°, …,
339.9° are calculated. The angular position corresponding
to the largest RMS value among three hundred RMS values Fig. 7. Variation in the RMS amplitude of the vibration signal
is the maximum vibration point of the mill shell. Fig. 7 of the mill shell with the angular position
shows a plot of the variation in the RMS amplitude of the
vibration with the angular position. As is evident, the RMS
amplitude increases with the increase in the angular
4 Results and Discussion
position and reaches a maximum value corresponding to a
4.1 Relation between the fill level and the maximum
characteristic angular position (326.6°), and subsequently
vibration point
decreases with further increase in the angular position. The
The mean values of the angular position of the maximum
angle 326.6° therefore represents the angular position of the
vibration point at each level case are shown in Table 2, as
maximum vibration point of the mill shell, which is
well as the standard deviation.
expressed by the symbol θ in this research.

Table 2. Angular positions of the maximum vibration point and standard deviation for different fill level cases in three tests
Fill level L/% 0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Angular
329.7 328.0 326.3 325.7 323.9 320.9 319.1
The 1st position θ/(°)
test Standard
1.527 5 0.956 6 1.380 5 1.283 6 1.154 8 1.933 9 1.055 2
deviation S
Angular
329.5 327.9 326.7 325.1 324.0 321.3 318.7
The 2nd position θ/(°)
test Standard
1.306 5 1.126 8 1.667 1 1.269 6 0.987 5 1.658 2 1.169 0
deviation S
Angular
329.1 327.4 326.6 325.9 323.5 321.9 319.5
The 3rd position θ/(°)
test Standard
1.153 3 1.605 8 1.715 0 1.493 0 1.252 3 1.411 4 1.469 0
deviation S

Fig. 8 shows the variation in the mean angular position

of the maximum vibration point on the mill shell with the
fill level at various experiments. In all the experiments it is
found that the angular position of the maximum vibration
point decreases as the fill level increases. This conclusion
has a good agreement with the results of the theoretical
calculation and the DEM simulation in Refs. [13]. At the
same time, this shows that in despite of different ball load
and water content in the coal in different experiments, it is
noticeable that the maximum vibration points vary slightly
for the same fill level in different experiments. However
this conclusion is not suited to the traditional vibration Fig. 8. Variation in the angular position of the maximum
characteristic variables of the fill level such as RMS value. vibration point on the mill shell with the fill level at various tests
The ball load and the water content in the coal greatly
affect on these variables. Table 3 shows the average RMS Fig. 9 shows the variation in the average RMS values of
values of the vibration signal of the mill shell for all fill the mill shell vibration with the fill level at various
level cases in different experiments, as well as the standard experiments. In most cases, at the same fill level the RMS
deviation. values of vibration signal is larger at higher ball load than
 HUANG Peng, et al: New Method to Measure the Fill Level of the Ball Mill II—
·558· YXIANG Zhongxia, et al: OptimalAnalysis
Design ofofBicycle Pgarameters Considering BiomechanicsY
FrameSignals
the Vibration

Table 3. RMS values of the vibration signals of the mill shell for different fill level cases in three tests
Fill level L/% 0 5 10 15 20 25 30
RMS value
523.42 470.35 445.46 426.35 398.86 380.35 367.57
The 1st YRMS/ (m·s–2)
test Standard
24.33 16.79 12.85 13.58 11.08 10.23 9.90
deviation S
RMS value
570.11 502.22 470.18 447.32 403.69 372.52 354.38
The 2nd YRMS/ (m·s–2)
test Standard
21.43 19.40 12.98 14.37 12.85 7.32 8.25
deviation S
RMS value
The 3rd 627.82 576.37 547.49 526.44 501.13 477.76 451.42
YRMS/ (m·s–2)
Standard
test 26.32 15.38 16.14 11.59 14.53 11.87 7.91
deviation S

a lower ball load, as shown in Table 3 and Fig. 9. However, carried out by using t-test method. Table 4 shows the t
the influence on the mill shell vibration caused by the water values, which are calculated from the results in Table 2 and
content in the coal can not be ignored. The coal powder as Table 3.
a damping medium in the mill significantly reduces the
noise and impact forces generated by the impact of the steel
balls. When the water content in the coal is higher, the
damping ratio of coal is higher; the coal powder can absorb
more impact energy of the steel balls, and the vibration of
the mill shell will decrease. So the effect of the water
content in the coal will become gradually apparent with the
increase of the fill level. In Fig. 9 and Table 3, at 25% and
30% level cases, due to the effect of higher water content in
the coal, the RMS values in the second test is smaller,
despite having a higher ball load than that in the first test at
the same fill level.
In this research, the comparison between the RMS value Fig. 9. Variation in the RMS amplitude of the vibration signal
and the angular position of maximum vibration point is of the mill shell with fill level at various tests

Table 4. Hypothesis testing for the difference in different tests by using t-test
Fill level L/% 0 5 10 15 20 25 30
The 1st vs the 2nd Angular position 0–0.545 0 0–0.370 1 –1.012 2 –01.820 3 0–0.360 5 0–0.860 0 –01.391 2
t value RMS 0–7.887 5 0–6.805 1 –7.413 8 0–5.810 1 0–1.559 0 –03.409 6 –05.606 9
The 2nd vs the 3rd Angular position –01.257 2 0–1.396 0 –00.222 9 0–2.235 8 –01.717 2 0–1.509 2 0–2.334 0
t value RMS 0–9.314 5 0–16.405 4 –20.446 8 –23.479 8 –27.514 6 –41.333 4 –46.507 2
The 3rd vs the 1st Angular position 0–1.717 0 0–1.758 2 –00.746 4 –00.556 4 0–1.286 1 0–2.287 7 –01.211 3
t value RMS –15.953 9 –25.502 2 –27.091 5 –030.714 5 –30.648 7 –34.043 4 –36.251 6

Given a 5% confidence level, and taken into account of
the number of samples, the accept domain of hypothesis
testing is as follows:
|t| £ 2.001 7.
It is obvious that the t values obtained by the RMS
values are not quite in the accept domain, as shown in
Table 4, and a significant difference exists in the average
RMS value of different experiments. In contrast, the t
values obtained by the angular position of maximum
vibration point are almost in the accept domain, and no
significant difference exists in the average angular position
of maximum vibration point. This conclusion shows that
the angular position of maximum vibration point as a
characteristic value of the fill level is superior to the
traditional vibration feature values and can overcome the
effects of the ball load and the water content in the coal.
(4)
4.2 Comparison between experimental results and
conclusions of the theoretical analysis and DEM
simulation
Fig. 10 shows the comparison between the results of
experiment in this paper and the conclusion of the
theoretical analysis and DEM simulation in Ref. [13]. In
Fig. 10 the experimental data are the average value of the
three experiments, and the results of the theoretical
calculation and the DEM simulation can be seen Table 1,
 CHINESE JOURNAL OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING
Table 4 and Fig. 11 in Ref. [13]. A good agreement can be
observed between the conclusions of the experiment and
Ref. [13], as shown in Fig. 10. This comparison reveals that
the relationship between the fill level and the angular
position of the maximum vibration point on the mill shell
proposed in this research is validated. This relationship can
provide a novel method and idea for the vibration method
to measure the fill level.
Fig. 10. Comparison of the angular position of
the maximum vibration point on the mill shell
between the experiments, theoretical analysis
and DEM simulation at various fill level cases
A further comparison shows that some differences exist
in the experimental data, the values of theoretical
calculation and the DEM simulation. And the difference
between the results of the theoretical calculation and the
DEM simulation has been discussed in detail in Ref. [13].
Comparing with the result of the DEM simulation, the
result of the theoretical calculation has a greater difference
with the experimental data, and the reason is that in the
theoretical calculation the motion of the steel balls and coal
in the roller, and the relative sliding existing in the
outermost layer steel ball and the mill wall were not
considered. The main reason of the difference between the
results of the experiment and the DEM simulation is that in
the DEM simulation the coal particles are modeled as the
sphere, and the collision between the steel balls and the
coal is simulated as the ball-to-ball collision, which has a
greater difference with the actual collision condition in the
mill. But the result of the DEM simulation has a relatively
better match with that of the experiment than that of the
theoretical calculation. Hence, this conclusion clearly
demonstrates the ability of the DEM to predict the mill load
behaviour and power draw, which brings it to the fore as a
favorable tool that holds possibilities for resolving some
practical problem of the ball mill.
5 Conclusions
(1) In the data acquisition region on the mill shell, the
RMS amplitude of the vibration is at its maximum value at
a certain angular position and it decreases when the angular
position is either increased or decreased. This angular
·559·
position represents the position of the maximum vibration
point on the mill shell.
(2) It has been found from all experiments that the
angular position of the maximum vibration position on the
mill shell decreases with increase in the fill level.
(3) The comparison between the traditional and the new
characteristic variable of the fill level shows that the
characteristic variable proposed in this paper is superior,
and is not subject to the influence of the ball load and the
water content in the coal.
(4) The research of this paper shows that the angular
position of the maximum vibration point as the
characteristic variable to measure the fill level is a feasible
and very attractive approach. At the same time the vibration
signals of the mill shell have huge potential to study the
collision of balls in the mill, the vibration feature and fault
of the mill shell, these works deserve our further
investigation.
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Biographical notes
HUANG Peng, born in 1981, is currently a lecturer at School of
Mechanical Engineering, Southeast University, China. He
2010. His research interests include signal processing and soft
measurement.
Tel: +86-25-52090512; E-mail: feihonghp@163.com
JIA Minping, born in 1960, is currently a professor and a PhD
candidate supervisor at School of Mechanical Engineering,
Southeast University, China. He received his PHD degree from
Southeast University, China, in 1991. His main research interests
include vibration analysis, fault diagnosis, nonlinear dynamic
system identification, artificial intelligence theory and application.
Tel: +86-25-52090512; E-mail: mpjia@seu.edu.cn
ZHONG Binglin, born in 1951, is currently a professor and a PhD
candidate supervisor at School of Mechanical Engineering,
Southeast University, China. He received his PHD degree from
University of Wales, England, in 1994. His main research interests
include dynamic system modeling and prediction, equipment
condition monitoring and fault diagnosis.
Tel: +86-25-52090512
Analysis of the Relation Between Charge Motion and
Fill Level of the Ball Mill Using the DEM Simulation
Peng Huang
School of Mechanical Engineering
Southeast University
Nanjing, China
feihonghp@163.com
Abstract—The relation between fill level of ball mill and motion
of outmost steel balls in mill roller is analyzed. Firstly, the charge
motion (including steel balls and coal particles) of ball mill for
four levels of fill level (0%, 5%, 10% and 15%) are simulated by
the discrete element method(DEM), and the simulation results
are verified against both theoretical trajectories of steel balls and
power draft of experimental mill. Then the simulation motion of
outmost steel balls of mill for four fill levels is studied, the
research shows that there is a descendent trend in the
detachment angle of outmost steel balls along with the increment
of the fill level, which provides a new theory method for
measuring fill level.
Keywords-DEM; ball mill; charge motion; fill level
I. INTRODUCTION
Ball mill pulverizing system is often to be used for
comminuting and drying coal in coal-fired power plant. Due to
its high energy consumption that is in 20% proportion to all
electricity consumption of power plant, how to make the mill
running safety and high efficiency is an important goal for
power plant [1, 2]. While the ball mill pulverizing system is
a system with non-linearity, long time delay and time-varying,
and the dependable methods for measuring fill level are scarce,
which leads to ball mill is usually operated in the very
uneconomical area to prevent the coal blockage. At the same
time automatic control system is hard to accomplish the steady
run of ball mill. So the exact measurement of fill level is a key
and base for realizing automatic, reliable and efficient
operation of the mill system.
At present many methods are applied for measuring the fill
level. The traditional method is that the fill level can be
measured as a function of the differential pressure between the
inlet and the outlet of the mill. As the fill level increases, more
coal powder is exposed to the air flow through the mill, air
drag forces are high, and the differential pressure increases.
The same relationship concerns the opposite condition, as the
fill level decreases. However the differential pressure signal is
affected by other factors, such as the rotational speed of the
mill, type of lifters used and their wear, particle size
distribution of the mill hold-up, physical properties of the
ground material and concentration of material in the air during
pneumatic transportation [3], especially defect of large time
delay exists in differential pressure signal, the measurement
accuracy of this method is limited and unsteady. In recent
This project is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China
(Grant No. 51005047, 51075070), Production and Research Joint Innovation
Fund of Jiangsu Province (Grant No. BY2009152), and New Doctor Teacher
Foundation of Southeast University of China (Grant No. 9202000024)
978-1-61284-872-3/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE
1647
Minping Jia, Binglin Zhong
School of Mechanical Engineering
Southeast University
Nanjing, China
mpjia@seu.edu.cn
years the acoustic signal of the ball mill is utilized for
measuring fill level [4, 5]. Along with the increment of the fill
level, the acoustic signal presents decreasing trend, and vice
versa. For the change of steel ball load and water content of
coal at the work process of ball mill, in addition the
disturbance of other noise near the mill, the acoustic signal will
be a greater difference under the same fill level condition,
which brings a big error for measuring fill level. Within the
last few years the vibration method that can measure fill level
through calculating the energy, power and effective value of
vibration signal of the mill bearing housing is applied widely
[6, 7]. The vibration signal that is affected by steel ball load
and water content of coal is analogous to acoustic signal. Due
to the bearing housing away from the mill roller, the
information of fill level is not obtained accurately by the
vibration signal that is collected from the mill bearing housing.
To sum up the above content, the interplay of many factors
and variables is the main reason that results in measuring fill
level difficultly. In this research, the charge (including steel
balls and coal particles) motion is analyzed by the discrete
element method, and the relation between the fill level and the
detachment angle of outmost steel balls (cling to the mill shell)
is discussed, which provides a new theory method to measure
fill level.
II. DISCRETE ELEMENT METHOD
The DEM was originated by Cundall for the analysis of
rock-mechanics problems and then was applied to model the
behavior of soil particles under dynamic loading conditions by
Cudall and Strack [8]. The DEM refers to a numerical scheme
that allows finite rotations and displacement of rigid bodies,
where complete loss of contacts and formation of new contacts
between bodies take place as the calculation cycle progresses
[9]. As the mill shell rotates, the charge motion consists of
various types of collisions, many between one ball and
another, and some between one ball and the mill shell. In
addition balls slide over other balls and the mill shell. Due to
the advantage of DEM that can simulate the motion of discrete
but interacting bodies and work mechanism of ball mill, DEM
uniquely suits the ball mill problem [10]. In the DEM the steel
balls and coal particles are simulated as the smooth round
sphere and contacts by them with other balls and walls are
considered to be distinct single-point contacts. The ball-to-ball
and ball-to-wall collision are modelled by the DEM with a
linear spring and dashpot. The spring provides the repulsive Fi = Fn,i + Fs,i i = 1,2,3 (7)
force, and the dashpot dissipates a portion of the relative
kinetic energy. In the following, ball-ball collision model is
Where Fn,i and Fs,i donate the normal and shear component
illustrated to introduce the motion and force of the ball.
Ball-wall collision is simulated in a similar manner. Fig. 1 is vectors, respectively.
schematic diagram of ball A and ball B collision.
III. DEM SIMULATION OF BALL MILL AND VERIFICATION
A. DEM Simulation
B
In experiment the type of ball mill is MG350/600, and the
A RB
main design parameters of mill are shown in TABLE Ⅰ. The
d steel balls load is 40t, and the radius of steel balls is 0.02m to
RA G 0.03m. The size of coal particles is 0.001m to 0.03m.
Y,2 n
TABLE I. THE MAIN DESIGN PARAMETERS OF MILL IN EXPERIMENT
Z,3 Mill speed
Mill type Mill radius (m)×length (m)
(r/min)
X,1 MG350/600 1.75×6.00 17.57

Figure 1. Schematic diagram of ball A to ball B collision

The speed, radius and length of mill, steel ball load and
G radius of steel balls that are identical with these of experiment
For ball-ball contact, the unit normal vector, n , from the
are simulated by DEM. The coal particles are modeled as
center of ball A to that of ball B that defines the contact plane
sphere, and radius of coal ball is 0.01m. These parameters are
is given by
shown in TABLE Ⅱ.
ni = (m B,i − m A,i ) d i = 1,2,3 (1)
TABLE II. DEM SMULATION PARAMETERS FOR BALL MILL
Mill radius (m)×length (m) Mill speed(r/min)
Where m A,i and m B,i are the position vectors of the centers of
1.75×6.00 17.57
balls A and B, and d is the distance between the ball centers: Radius of steel ball Radius of coal ball
Steel ball load (t)
(m) (m)
1/2 40 0.02-0.03 0.01
⎡ ⎤
d=⎢
⎢⎣
∑ (m
i
B,i − m A,i )(m B,i − m A,i )⎥
⎥⎦
i = 1,2,3 (2)
As shown in Figs. 2a, 2b, 2c and 2d, the motion of steel
balls and coal balls for four levels of fill level (0%, 5%, 0%
and 15%) are simulated by DEM, respectively. In Figs. 2b, 2c
The contact velocity vi which is defined as the velocity of and 2d, the black balls whose radius is relatively small
ball B relative to ball A at the contact point, is given by comparing with that of steel balls are coal balls.

vi = m B,i − m A,i i = 1,2,3 (3)

The normal and shear components of vi are α Z

X
v n , i = v j n j ni i = j = 1,2,3 (4) α
Y
v s ,i = vi − v n ,i i = 1,2,3 (5)

The angular velocity ωi which represents the angular

velocity of the centered of ball B with respect that of ball A, is
defined as the following equation:
ωi = ε i , j ,k n j vs ,k d i = j = k = 1,2,3 (6) (a) Simulated charge motion of ball mill for 0% fill level

Where ε i , j ,k is the alternating tensor of third rank [10].

The contact force vector Fi which represents the action of

ball A on ball B can be resolved into normal and shear
components with respect to the contact plane as

1648
 coordinate of ball C in Fig. 3. Once the ball C passes across the
detachment point P (0, -1.46, 0.96), the ball C starts to do
parabolic trajectory, which can be seen by the constant
velocity process of y direction in Fig. 4. TABLE Ⅲ shows a
comparison of theoretic and simulated values of detachment
angle and velocity of detachment point for ball C. An exact
match between simulated and theoretic trajectories for ball C is
can be obtained by Fig. 3, Fig. 4 and TABLE Ⅲ. In addition,
the flight of a few balls in parabolic paths and cascading of the
rest of the ball seen in Figs. 2a, 2b, 2c and 2d closely agrees
with the theoretic trajectories.

Detachment point P
(b) Simulated charge motion of ball mill for 5% fill level

m
z coordinate

y coordinate

s
Figure 3. The change of position of ball C with respect of time in DEM
simulation for 0% fill level

Parabolic
(c) Simulated charge motion of ball mill for 10% fill level
movement
m/s

Velocity of
y direction

Velocity of
z direction

s
Figure 4. The change of velocity of ball C with respect to time in DEM
simulation for 0% fill level
(d) Simulated charge motion of ball mill for 15% fill level TABLE III. COMPARISON OF THEORETIC AND SIMULATED VALUES OF
Figure 2. Simulated charge motion of ball mill for four levels of fill level. THE DETACHMENT ANGLE AND VELOCITY OF THE DETACHMENT POINT FOR
BALL C
B. Model Verification Velocity of the detachment point
Detachment
In this study, two methods are applied to verify the DEM P（m/s）
angle α（°）
simulation of ball mill. One is to compare the simulated and y direction z direction
Theoretic
theoretical trajectories of the steel balls, another is to compare values
53.11 1.93 2.58
the simulated and experimental power draft values of ball mill. DEM
Fig. 3 and Fig. 4 show the changes of position (y and z 56.73 2.02 2.10
simulation
coordinate) and velocity (y and z direction) of the steel ball C
with respect to time in DEM simulation, respectively. In Fig. Since the laws of motion imply that velocity, acceleration,
3, when time is zero, the steel ball C (0, 0.36, -1.71) locates at force, power and energy are related, predicting power
ragged edge of steel balls and clings to the wall in Fig. 2a. successfully is tantamount to having predicted the other
When the mill begins to rotate, the steel ball C runs circular quantities correctly as well [9]. And the power values of the
movement, which can be reflected by the change of y and z

1649
mill are obtained easily in experiment, comparison of
simulated and experimental power draft values of the mill is a
good way to verify the DEM simulation. A comparison of
simulated and experimental power draft values of the mill is
shown in TABLE Ⅳ. On comparison, it can be seen clearly
that simulated and experimental power values match very
closely, and the DEM simulation of ball mill is reliable.
TABLE IV. COMPARISON OF SIMULATED AND EXPERIMENTAL MILL
POWER VALUES
Power of ball mill (kw)
Fill level (%)
DEM simulation
0 608
5 675
10 743
15 778
IV. THE STUDY ON THE RELATION BETWEEN FILL LEVEL
AND CHARGE MOTION
Since actual steel balls trajectories are difficult to obtain, in
this research the relation between fill level and motion of
outmost steel balls is discussed by DEM simulation of ball mill
for four levels of fill level (0%, 5%, 10% and 15%). In charge
motion process of DEM simulation, the changes of position
and velocity of ball C with respect to time are monitored. And
the starting positions of ball C (0, 0.36, -1.71) are same for
four simulations. In the above content, the detachment angle of
ball C in Fig. 2a can be calculated from Fig. 3 and Fig. 4. In a
similar manner, the other three detachment angles of ball C in
Figs. 2b, 2c and 2d can be gained. A comparison of four
detachment angles of ball C for DEM simulation of four levels
of fill level is plotted in Fig. 5.
57
56
55
Detachment Angle(• )
54
53
52
51
50
49
48
47
0 5
Fill Level(%)
Figure 5. Comparison of four detachment angles of ball C for four levels of
fill level
The conclusion that the detachment angle of outmost steel
balls decreases as the fill level increasing can be found from
Fig. 5. Since the detachment angle of outmost steel balls is
affected mainly by the speed of the mill, this angle should be
changed inside certain extent along with the change of fill
level at a constant speed of ball mill. This conclusion needs to
be validated by follow-up experiments. If this conclusion is to
be confirmed, in the further work, mill vibration signals should
be directly collected off of the mill shell by the vibration
sensors mounted on the mill shell and analyzed to obtain the
detachment angle of the outmost steel balls, and the fill level
can be measured by detachment angle of the outmost steel
balls.
CONCLUSION
(1) The charge motion (including steel balls and coal
particles) of ball mill for four levels of fill level (0%, 5%,
10% and 15%) are simulated by discrete element method,
and the simulation results are verified against both
theoretical trajectories of steel balls and power draft of
Experiment experimental mill.
662
689 (2) The simulation motion of outmost steel balls of mill for
715 four fill levels is studied, and the research shows that
750 there is a descendent trend in the detachment angle along
with the increment of the fill level.
(3) In the next work, the relation of fill level and detachment
angle of the outmost steel balls should be validated by
experiment. Once this relation is right, how to calculate
detachment angle of the outmost steel balls and measure
fill level by detachment angle is an important and
difficult work in the future.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors wish to express their thanks to Dr. Fei-yun Xu,
Dr. Jian-zhong Hu for their assistance in this work.
REFERENCES
[1] P. Huang, M. P. Jia, and B. L. Zhong, “New method to measure the fill
level of the ball mill I-Theoretical analysis and DEM simulation,”
Chinese Journal of Mechanical Engineering, vol. 23, no. 4, 2010, pp.
460-467.
[2] P. Huang, M. P. Jia, and B. L. Zhong, “Investigation on measuring the
fill level of an industrial ball mill based on the vibration characteristic of
the mill shell,” Minerals Engineering, vol. 22, no. 14, 2009, pp.
1200-1208.
[3] M. Ramasamy, S. S. Narayanan, and CH. D. P. Rao, “Control of ball
mill grinding circuit using model predictive control scheme,” , vol. 15,
no. 3, 2005, pp. 273-283.
[4] K. Enshun, Y. G. Guo, and Y. Y. Du, “Acoustic vibration signal
processing and analysis in ball mill,” The 6th World Congress on
Intelligent Control and Automation, Dalian, China, vol. 2, pp.
6690-6693, June 2006. (In Chinese)
[5] Y. Sha, Y. Y. Cao, and Y. Y. Guo, “Analysis of acoustic signal and BP
neural Network-Based recognition of level of coal in ball mill,” Journal
of Northeastern University, vol. 27, no. 12, 2006, pp. 1319-1323. (In
Chinese)
10 15 [6] B. Behera, B. K. Mishra, and C. V. R. Maurty, “Experimental analysis
of charge dynamics in tumbling mills by vibration signature technique,”
Minerals Engineering, vol. 20, no. 1, 2007, pp. 84-91.
[7] Z. G. Su, P. H. Wang, and X. J. Yu, “Experimental investigation of
vibration signal of an industrial tubular ball mill: Monitoring and
diagnosing,” , vol. 21, no. 1, 2008, pp. 699-710.
[8] P. A. Cundall and O. D. L. Strack, “A discrete numerical model for
granular assemblies,” Geotechnique, vol. 29, 1979, pp. 47-65.
[9] W. C. Paul, M. Rob, and M. Steve, “Comparision of DEM and
experiment for a scale model SAG mill,” Mineral Processing, vol. 68,
2003, pp. 129-165.
[10] N. Djordjevic, F. N. Shi, and R. Morrison, “Determination of lifter
design, speed and filling effects in AG mills by 3D DEM,” Minerals
Engineering, vol. 17, 2004, pp. 1135-1142.
1650
Study on a new vibration method for measuring
the fill level of the ball mill

Peng Huang, Minping Jia and Binglin Zhong

Abstract The vibration signals of the ball mill shell and the bearing housings with
different coal feeder cases were collected in experiment. The original vibration
signals were filtered by the designed filter based on the relation between the mill
vibration and the fill level. At the same time, the vibration signals of the mill shell
were compared with the vibration signals of the bearing housing according to re-
flecting the sensitivity of the fill level change. And the result of this comparison
reveals that the vibration signals of the mill shell present a higher sensitivity to the
changes on the fill level, which provides a reliable basis for the accurate meas-
urement of the fill level.

Keywords Ball mill, Fill level, Vibration signal, Signal processing

1 Introduction

It is well known that the ball mill has been applied widely for comminuting coal in
coal-fired power plant. At the same time this system needs high energy intensive.
However the ball mill pulverizing system is of non-linearity, long time delay and
time-varying, the fill level of coal powder can not be measured accurately, which
leads the mill to be operated usually under the very uneconomical condition to
prevent the coal blockage. Thus the exact measurement of the fill level is a key
and basic factor for realizing automatic and efficient operation of the mill system.
Up until now, many methods have been applied for measuring the fill level. The
traditional methods have the differential pressure method [1], the current method

Peng Huang
School of Mechanical Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, China
e-mail:feihonghp@163.com
Minping Jia
School of Mechanical Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, China
e-mail:mpjia@seu.edu.cn
Binglin Zhong
School of Mechanical Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, China
2

[2], the acoustic method [3], the strain method [4] and the supersonic method [5].
Within the last few years, the vibration method that can measure the fill level by
processing vibration signals of the mill bearing housing has been applied widely
[6, 7]. However, there are many reasons and vibration sources to cause the vibra-
tion of bearing housings. These vibration sources will affect characteristics of the
time and frequency domain of vibration signals for the bearing housings. Further-
more, vibration transmission path also have a certain impact for vibration signals
of bearing housings. So vibration signals of the bearing housings can not accu-
rately reflect the collision condition of steel balls in the mill and the fill level in-
formation compared with the vibration signals of the mill shell.
In this research, an experiment was operated at an industrial ball mill in coal-
fired power plant and vibration signals of the mill were collected. The main pur-
pose of this paper is to confirm the superior signals for measuring the fill level by
comparing the vibration signals of mill shell and bearing housing, which provides
a reliable basis for measuring the fill level accurately.

2 Experiment

2.1 Experimental Equipment

In experiment, a 3.5 m-diameter by 6.0 m-long industrial tubular ball mill that was
driven by a three-phase motor was operated at 17.57rpm.
In Fig. 1, four acceleration sensors were installed at different positions that lo-
cate at the same axis on the mill shell, and two acceleration sensors were installed
at forward and back bearing housing, separately. The sensor that was installed on
the mill shell will rotate together with the rotation of the ball mill, which is not the
same as the traditional vibration method that the sensor can be directly connected
with data acquisition computer by the cable. In order to realize the wireless trans-
mission of vibration data, our laboratory has developed a set of wireless transmit-
ter device.

Fig. 1 Schematic diagram of the fixed position of the sensor

Because a close relation exists in vibration of the mill shell and the fill level,
the impact region of the outmost layer steel balls on the mill shell is considered as
 3

the region of vibration data acquisition. In order to reduce the acquisition group
and acquisition time of vibration signals, the region of data acquisition is in range
of 310°-340° on the mill shell shown in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2 The region of the data acquisition on the mill

shell

2.2 Collecting the vibration signals of shell and bearing housing

When the coal feeder is set higher in the mill, the fill level is higher, and vice
versa. So the different coal feed amount condition can denote different fill level
condition. In experiment, the vibration signals were collected under the eight
stable coal feed amount conditions, i.e., 0t/h, 20t/h, 30t/h, 35t/h, 40t/h, 45t/h,
50t/h and 55t/h. In Experiment the sampling frequencies of the shell and bearings
signal were set at 40 and 19.2 kHz, separately. And the sampling point of the shell
and bearings signal were set were set at 4096 and 2048 points, separately.
When a vibration signal is collected, the sensor will pass arc length of 10°
along with the rotation of the mill, which can be obtained by the speed of the mill,
sampling frequency and sampling point. In order to obtain the vibration informa-
tion of data acquisition region (between 310°and 340°), the sensor needs to work
at angular position 310°, 320° and 330° on the mill shell, respectively. In the fol-
lowing, the experimental steps and process of collecting data are illustrated.
(1) Under the stable condition of 0t/h, thirty data were collected at the forward
and back bearing housing, separately. At the same time four sensors installed
at the mill shell colleted thirty data at angular position 310°, 320° and 330°,
separately.
(2) With the similar method, the shell and bearing vibration signals were obtained
under 20t/h, 30t/h, 35t/h, 40t/h, 45t/h, 50t/h and 55t/h conditions, separately.

(a) Time domain waveform (b) FFT waveform

Fig. 3 Domain ad FFT waveform of the vibration signal of the mill shell
4

Fig. 3a shows a typical time domain waveform of the mill shell vibration. And
the corresponding FFT spectrum is presented in Fig. 3b. The main energy of vi-
bration signal focus at a frequency band that is in range of 1000Hz-10000Hz. This
frequency band should be the main range of impact frequency response that is
caused by the impact of steel balls and can reflect the fill level information. With
the similar method, the range of impact frequency response for bearing signals can
be obtained.

3 The analysis and discussion the vibration signals

3.1 Calculating the sensitivity index of reflecting fill level change

Because the main range of impact frequency response has been obtained in the
above content, the band-pass filter is needed to extract the impact information and
eliminate the effect of other factors for vibration signal. And the vibration signals
of shell and bearing are filtered by the designed filter.
In this research the superior signal for measuring the fill level is confirmed by
comparing the sensitivity that the vibration signals of mill shell and bearing hous-
ing reflecting the change of the fill level. The sensitivity index of reflecting fill
level change is calculated by the vibrated root mean square (RMS) of these two
kinds of signals. The RMS of forward and back bearing housing signals at every
condition is obtained by:

1 30 1 m i 2
X rms = ∑ ∑ ( xn )
30 i =1 m n=1
(1)

i
where m is the number of the sampling point, and is equal to 2048; xn is the dis-
crete vibration value in the time domain after filtering ith signal.
The RMS of the mill shell signals at every condition is calculated by:

30 ⎛ m m m ⎞
∑ 3 ⎜⎜⎜ ∑ (u ) ∑ (v ∑ (w ⎟
1 1 1 1 1
Yrms = i 2
+ i 2
n) + i 2
n)
(2)
⎟⎟
n
30 m m m
i =1 ⎝ n =1 n =1 n =1 ⎠

where m is the number of the sampling point, and is equal to 4096; u ni , v ni and wni
are the discrete vibration value in the time domain after filtering ith data collected
at angular position 310°, 320° and 330°, separately.
 5

Because there are very big difference between the signal amplitude of the mill
shell and the bearing housing, these two kinds of signals are carried out by the
normalization method to compare under the same standard. This normalization
method is expressed by:

xi − x min
xi' = 0.1 + × 0.8 (3)
x max − x min

where xi’ is the data that are obtained by the normalization processing; xi is the
RMS; xmax is the maximum RMS value in every condition at every vibration sta-
tion; xmin is the minimum RMS value in every condition at every vibration station.
The sensitivity index of reflecting fill level change is obtained by RMS variety
of the adjacent coal feeder amount condition, which is calculated by:

x i' +1
ai = 1 − (4)
x i'

where a i is the sensitivity index of reflecting fill level change; xi' and xi' +1 are the
RMS of the forward and back condition that are obtained by the normalization
processing, separately.

3.2 Comparison between the vibration signals of the shell and

bearing

Table 1 shows the sensitivity index of reflecting fill level change at every vibra-
tion station.

Table 1 The index of the vibration signal of the different sensors for reflecting the sensitivity of
the fill level change

Number
of adja- Forward Back bear- Vibration Vibration Vibration Vibration
cent con- bearing ing station 1 station 2 station 3 station 4
dition
1, 2 0.17535 0.38583 0.17277 0.075801 0.06955 0.034087
2, 3 0.54767 0.10914 0.17 0.2019 0.18071 0.15551
3, 4 0.082084 0.12782 0.10083 0.12498 0.12462 0.12549
4, 5 0.52685 0.09317 0.11314 0.11106 0.17316 0.18405
5, 6 0.13752 0.061331 0.30897 0.32467 0.25355 0.28187
6, 7 0.1194 0.67477 0.3774 0.4382 0.40363 0.43218
7, 8 0.096971 0.15895 0.52832 0.48956 0.54763 0.53186
Average 0.24084 0.23014 0.25306 0.25231 0.25041 0.24929
6

It is clearly seen from the Table 1 that the sensitivity index of the mill shell
signals is higher than that of bearing housings, which indicates that the vibration
signals of the mill shell are sensitive to detect the small changes of the fill level,
and can also measure the great changes of the fill level. So the vibration signals of
the mill shell are the superior signals for measuring the fill level. At the same time
it can be seen from Table 1 that the sensitivity index of the forward bearing hous-
ing is higher than that of the back bearing housing, which has a good agreement
with existing research conclusion [8].

4 Conclusion

The signal that can reflect the information of the fill level accurately is the key
factor for measuring the fill level exactly. In this research the vibration signals of
the mill shell and bearing housing are processed by the relation between the vibra-
tion of the mill shell and the fill level. At the same time the vibration signals of the
mill shell are compared with that of the bearing housing according to reflect the
sensitivity of change of the fill level, and this comparison reveals that the vibration
signals of the mill shell present a higher sensitivity to changes on the fill level,
which provides a solid basis for the accurate measurement of the fill level.

Acknowledgments This project is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China

(Grant No. 51005047, 51075070), Production and Research Joint Innovation Fund of Jiangsu
Province (Grant No. BY2009152).

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